The sun was rising and I could hear the door unlocking. “James?” I called out, but there was no response. We had come to the House of Abigail Drew on a dare with some friends; what happened within the walls was unspeakable, but I will try to retell the tale as I leave the house.

As I said it was a dare brought up by Janet, James’ girlfriend, “You guys do a lot of crazy stunts,” she said, “What about you take on the mansion of Abigail Drew? Unless that’s too much for you,” she chuckled at her own joke. James and I didn’t have to second guess accepting this challenge and making it a trip so we invited Rick, Will, Amanda, Linda, and of course Janet was automatically in to see us do the dare first hand.

“So who’s driving?” was the biggest question I had on my mind.

“Bro. I got this,” responded a calm James.

The house was almost three and a half hours away and was out in the middle of nowhere on the banks of Black Edge. We set the date and time for Friday at 3p.m., everyone would meet up at James’ house then the adventure would begin. Obviously we all had to be prepared seeing how we were staying the night at the mansion. “James. We don’t have to do this anymore I changed my mind,” Janet mentioned as he and I made the plan for Friday’s drive. “Oh no, we’re doing this. We are going to be the first ones to accomplish this “impossible” task,” an excited James responded.

“Yo, James! How much food should we pack?” I shouted in the supermarket where we were attempting at planning out the whole journey.

“Shut up bro! Be considerate of others,” he responded over the next three aisles.

“Alright alright,” I answered back. Literally the cart was ready to burst with food and water. By 2:00 p.m. we had all of our personal stuff and food packed in James’ van; we were just waiting on everyone else to get arrive at his house and finish loading the van. To our surprise, everyone got there by 2:45 p.m. and we actually left at 3! For the first time we left at the designated time. “You two are crazy!” Rick, Will, Amanda, and Linda said in unison. Of course we laughed at the statement, but something felt off Janet was frightened about the trip, after she suggested it. Nonetheless we set out on the adventure! What came of it, as I mentioned, was more than we expected to receive from Abigail Drew. We were entering the town of Hacketsville at 6 p.m., Black Edge was only twenty minutes away from there so we were doing great on time. The sun was well on its way out and darkness began shrouding the night.

We arrived at Abigail Drew’s house by 6:45, due to some pit stops. “James. I really don’t want to do this anymore,” begged Janet. “Calm down,” James started to respond in the calmest manner, “We got this under control. Plenty of lights, back up batteries, and FOOD! Oh, we have more than enough food!”

“Okay, but I still don’t have a good feeling about this,” she rebutted. The way Janet was responding made me think there was a problem going on that she wasn’t telling us about, I found it too strange even for Janet to respond this way; she usually went with any crazy ideas we decided to do. “Cars unloaded James,” I shouted as I closed the trunk.

“Awesome, then we are ready to start this trip,” responded James.

“I hope you two idiots know what you’re doing,” questioned Amanda.

“Yeah, yeah. When have we ever put you guys in danger,” I responded with a chuckle. We got to the door, but stopped to read the sign posted:

Danger: Enter at your own risk.

The sign was great, especially with all the graffiti that made it hard to read. Either way we entered the house, as we opened the front door the strongest gust of wind hit us almost knocking us down. The only problem was that there was NO WIND present, thus began the unexplainable. We found the living room and made it “base camp”, seeing how it was smack dab in the middle of the house. The unexplainable continued after we settled down in the living room. The upstairs doors opened and closed on their own, the lights flickered (When there was no electricity in the mansion!), and worst of all scratches started to come from the basement and along all the walls. While everyone got closer and closer to one another, James and I decided to be the two daredevils to venture and attempt at seeing some more of the mansion. First stop we made was upstairs and we found something very interesting, so we decided to call everyone up to see what they thought of the situation. The room was squeaky clean….There were no cobwebs, dust, there was absolutely nothing that was abandoned about the room.

“Why is it so clean?” asked Amanda.

“Obviously Abigail enjoys a clean room,” remarked Will.

“Yeah or someone’s staying here,” chimed in Rick.

“Guys I think we should go back home,” Janet mentioned once more. Everyone kept ignoring Janet’s comments. Slowly the night dragged on; by 9 p.m. there was chatter all throughout the house, although none of the chatter was coming from any of us! The night got creeper when Rick suddenly had a full blown seizure, never had he had a seizure in his life hence it was pretty insane. Amanda, one of the best students in her Nursing class, jumped to help (She was the nerd of the group, and we loved our nerd). She got the situation under control and before we knew it Rick was back to normal. Then a loud donging occurred at eleven o’clock. It would have been refreshing to know that the night was almost over, sadly there was NO clock within the mansion and no one brought a watch that would be that loud! Then we noticed something even crazier…..Linda was GONE! We knew she had come in with us, unpacked, and set up base camp.

“Yo, where is Linda?” I asked. Everyone looked bewildered and responded, “I haven’t seen her since we unpacked.” So what started off with a weird event, the gust of wind, turned into an even crazier adventure with the disappearance of Linda. “We have to find her,” Janet said exasperated.

“We will,” responded James.

“No one gets left behind!” Will, Rick, and I responded in unison.

“You guys are such dorks when it comes to your responses,” rebutted Janet and Amanda. We split up and searched for Linda. The funniest thing is we all decided to check the same places and all those places were upstairs, no one wanted to go into the basement. “Guys! I think we need to actually go into the basement,” I decided to speak up about the one place we hadn’t looked and as I said that everything in the house began to lock down. The doors, windows, and closets all locked shut as the clock struck midnight. A huge gust of wind hit us once more, but this time there was a voice that said “She is no longer a part of the living. Like all of you will soon be!” We ran back to base camp and what we found was beyond belief.

Our entire base camp was destroyed and all our supplies were gone. “Hey guys,” said Janet with a hint of fear in her voice, “What’s that dripping in the middle?” Obviously without much light we only saw the dripping, but after looking around with the little light from cell phones the huge puddle under the dripping appeared. “Please, don’t point it up,” begged Amanda. We didn’t listen and flashed our lights up at the ceiling and what we saw was a gruesome scene. “Well we found Linda,” remarked a shocked Will. The girls had to look away, seeing the disgusting scene they almost lost their lunch. James and I just couldn’t look away from the scene, Linda was hung upside down, her internal organs were completely spewing down her face, and her blood was dripping the little pool underneath.

“Rick. Go check if the front door is locked,” I spoke up.

“Yeah, Rick do that please. Will get over here and let’s get her down,” James asked Will. While they were doing that, I took Janet and Amanda and attempted at finding our stuff that just seemed to have vanished. As they were cutting Linda down, Will slipped and fell awkwardly on his leg. “Ah!” he screamed out in pain.

“What happened Will?” shouted James as he brought down Linda’s corpse.

“I don’t know,” he shouted feeling the surge of pain, “I was fucking pushed man. This place is haunted or something. We got to get out of here.”

“Alright calm down bro. Amanda can you come check his leg out?” asked James while placing Linda’s body against the wall.

“Okay,” responded a still disgusted Amanda.

The front door was shut and locked, adding on to the problem we couldn’t find any of our personal gear. Amanda suddenly pulled us all to the side and said, “His leg is completely broken. Like the bone broke skin and I can’t fix it without my kit. He may end up bleeding out right here.” No one knew how to react to the news, but now that we were down the only thing we had to worry about was getting out of the damn house! “What if we put a tourniquet on the leg?” asked Rick.

“Yeah, that would help,” responded Amanda, “but we don’t have anything to use for that.”

“We’re ALL wearing belts!” the guys shouted in unison, even will shouted while writhing in pain.

“Oh! I completely overlooked that fact,” chuckled Amanda. James started to take off his belt to get the tourniquet on Will’s leg, then the basement door flung open and Will was dragged down. “GUYS! Help!” he shouted. We ran to grab his leg, Will didn’t even feel the pain because he didn’t want to end up like Linda. “We aren’t going to let go,” shouted James and as he finished that phrase knives started flying toward us, where the knives came from was UN-EXPLAINABLE seeing how the house was completely empty!

In short we couldn’t hold on to Will and he got dragged down to the basement with the door slamming shut behind. We attempted at breaking down the door to the basement but it was pretty well shut. We heard Will’s screams as we assumed he was being tortured. We felt his pain and got even more motivation to bring down the door. James and I were good at figuring out puzzles so we charged ahead and attempted at opening the door. “HELP! Stop please no! Abigail please why are you doing this?!??” That’s all we heard from Will in the basement. We didn’t know what was down there or how to break this stupid door down, the frustration was building and building.

“Guys….” stammered Janet, “We found something that may help.”

In the midst of everything we didn’t realize that there was writing all over the walls. The wall writing read:

All who enter this house will never see the light of day again.

The key to opening the door is blood.

“Who wrote that?” was the question we all asked each other immediately.

“Man that’s creepy,” James thought out loud.

“I knew we shouldn’t have come in,” replied Janet, “you two are a bunch of daredevils that now decide to get everyone killed.

“HELP! Somebody! Oh God please help!” shouted Will from the basement. So with the writing on the wall as a sort of key we had to think what it meant, while ignoring the fact that the writing was done in blood. “Oh my god!” shouted Amanda as she began to cry.

“What happened?” responded Janet.

“The message was written with Linda’s blood,” Amanda stammered as she began to cry hysterically.

“No that can’t be,” Janet began, as she started to well up with emotion. The guys shed their tears but refused to cry hysterically. But it donged on me, what that writing did was give us the key to our escape. “Guys I think I know how to save Will,” I spoke up over the girl’s hysterical crying.

“How do you figure that?” responded James.

“Well don’t judge me or think negative of me but…..” I walked over to Linda’s body and dipped my hand in the pool of blood. Tears rained down my cheeks as I did this and I prayed under my breath for forgiveness. The girls went to beat me for the action but James and Rick held them trying to see what I was thinking. I walked with a bloody hand to the basement door and smeared the blood all over the door. “What the fuck!” shouted Janet, “Have you lost your mind?” The others just watched as I did the action, Amanda was breaking down mentally and did not at all react to the action. “I’m sorry,” I responded, “I thought it would work. The wall writing did say it would open with blood.”

“Well….” started Rick, “What if she wants fresh blood?” Amanda broke down further and further, if Rick wasn’t holding her she would be on the floor crying.

“Rick may have a point,” spoke up James, “She may want fresh blood.”

“SHUT UP!” cried out Janet, “Don’t you recognize this dumb bitch!” With the word bitch the door to the basement flung open and the house shook with anger, almost as if Abigail was angered by Janet’s comment.

“What did you do babe!?” shouted James.

“I don’t know,” answered Janet, “This house just got to me I guess.” As they discussed this, Rick and I attempted at getting Will, while Amanda was still checked out of reality. The sight of the basement was horrendous, there were several bodies spewed all around. “Guys, please get me out of here! We have to get out of here,” cried out Will with tears running down. “Will we got you,” responded Rick.

“Will, you know we will get you out of here. We’re all getting out of here,” I reassured him.

It was no easy task getting him out of the basement seeing how many new wounds he had. Upstairs a loud ruckus began to brew, now that Abigail was enraged by Janet’s comment. When we got out of the basement; all we saw was Janet, James, and Amanda dodging a plethora of items. Rick and I attempted at getting Will as close to the exit as possible. “Where the heck is this stuff coming from?” asked James.

“Who cares! We need to get out of here,” responded Amanda checking back into reality.

“I told you guys not to come anymore!” shouted Janet.

“What’s up with you?” I had to ask, seeing how it was unorthodox of Janet not to play along with our adventures.

“Yeah, Janet. If that is your real name? What’s up with you?” mentioned Rick. James’ facial expression changed as he suspected Janet did something, before they all came out on this little venture.

“Janet, you know I love you, but I need to know why you wanted us not to come after you brought it up to us” asked James. She started crying and mumbled out, “You guys will hate me if I tell you.” As she finished saying this Amanda was struck in the head with a plank, a freaking plank of wood. “Guys!” yelled out Rick, “Amanda’s hurt bad, I mean Will’s in worse shape but still she’s hurt bad. I need you guys.” As I ran over and tried to take the necessary steps to help, the good thing was that the whirlwind of items ceased. “Amanda! Hey stay with me,” I said frantically, “What do I do? How do I stop this bleeding?” She was losing blood and all I knew was to press down and apply pressure to the wound. “There’s really nothing you can do. Just keep applying pressure and make some sort of bandage out of a shirt,” she spat out, trying to stay awake knowing that if she fell asleep she may not wake up.

“Janet! Babe! What did you do before we left?!?” shouted out James as he grabbed her by the shoulders demanding answers.

“I played the Ouija board with Linda,” she stammered out as she began to cry. We were all in shock and disbelief, seeing how we all warned them not to play it when they first told us Linda bought it.

“We warned you! We all warned you not to mess with it,” James cried out, “So we are now probably dealing with something that wants all of us dead.”

“I’m sorry, babe. We didn’t do it just once though,” she spoke out. Hearing the second sentence, we all knew that our fate had been sealed in this damn house.

“Babe, just stop talking now,” James crying from anger. Oh man were we in for a night, seeing how time slowed down.

“One question,” shot up Rick, “Did you interact with Abigail?”

“Yes,” Janet stammered.

“I say this with love, but what the hell where you thinking,” spoke out a dazed Amanda still not in the best shape.

“What did you guys talk about,” shot up Will (everyone kind of forgot about him for a bit), “I’m pretty sure it wasn’t about unicorns and rainbows.” The clown of the group, always finding a way to crack a joke.

“No we talked about visiting her,” Janet responded. That’s interesting, Abigail was “lonely” I mean she was a ghost. All this news brought so many questions to mind, but the questions would have to wait until after we got out. Janet continued, “I don’t know, but we felt bad for Abigail so maybe spending the night was going to help her we thought. We just thought we could give her rest and put her at ease. I had no idea this would happen; although Linda was the one who talked to her more seeing how the Ouija was at her house.” It sounds like a bad movie, but we had to accept what was happening and try to get out alive. “Look guys,” James pointed to the door. Abigail began to write, once more in blood:

7 enter but none shall leave. Visit poor Abigail Drew, gets them all.

“Well obviously you’ve been played,” spat out Will with a sarcastic tone.

“Seems like you’re feeling a bit better about this situation,” rebutted Rick.

“I mean it’s obvious what’s about to go down,” Will responded.

We all knew what was about to happen, but we also felt we could somehow avoid it. Ultimately though we would be faced with difficult decisions throughout the night. “I’m sorry guys,” Janet balled out, “I blame Linda more simply because the Ouija was at her house.”

“Nice way to blame the dead,” I spoke out, although she had a point.

“Alright. Let’s build a bridge and get over it,” firmly stated James.

“Let’s get down to business. To defeat the Huns,” sang out Rick.

“Rick why would you start singing that?” Amanda questioned still woozy from the blood loss.

“Well it just felt right,” he laughed as he knew it really wasn’t the appropriate song to sing at the time.

“Should of just sang I’ll make a man out of you instead Rick,” laughed Will, obviously feeling better about his situation knowing that there was only one way out.

“We are not dying here,” shouted James as if to Abigail herself.

“Bro, I’m pretty sure that’s the only way out,” rebutted Will.

“No. We are all smart,” I spoke up, “We just need to put our heads together and make a plan.” We all huddled around the corner by the front door and started to think about how to get out. Everything was shut from attic to basement, so now what we had to really do is find a way around the obstacle so we wouldn’t die.

“I got it!” yelled Amanda, “Sacrifice Janet!”

“What?” Janet cried out in disbelief.

“Yeah she got us into this mess. Give Abigail what she wants!”

“No one else is dying!” screamed out James to Amanda’s suggestion.

“We have to stick together to survive the night,” I threw in.

“Amanda makes a good point though,” Will began, but Rick cut him off saying, “What about we give Abigail, Will since he’s almost dead?”

“Hell no! I’m very much alive and well,” responded Will to that comment.

“Guys? It’s super quiet, where is Abigail?” questioned James.

“That’s true. Where is Abigail?” echoed Janet.

“I mean we could try to escape now you know,” mentioned Rick, “We are all somewhat patched up. Will is cracking his jokes and Amanda is conscious and somewhat coherent.”

“Somewhat coherent?” butted in Amanda, “I’m fully coherent. Still a little woozy but I can manage an escape.” Honestly I felt like we should have tried to escape, but deep down in the pit of my stomach I felt like it wasn’t safe and the only exit route was the one that no one wanted to take. As we all got ready to head to the door, something caught our eye. It was a wedding picture that we managed to miss when we came in. “She’s so pretty,” commented Amanda.

“Yeah! I hope I look as pretty as her when I get married,” mentioned Janet.

“Typical girls,” through in Will. After the moment we decided to move for the front door, but chaos erupted once again. We all ducked down and tried to cover each other as best we could to avoid all the items that whirled at us. Suddenly Will got flung up into the air upside down. We were helpless to do anything to save him as Abigail slit his throat above us and took yet another life. “Two down,” stated Abigail with a strange satisfaction, “Only five to go.”

We all went into shock! What we just witnessed was so intense that we fell into disbelief that it had actually occurred. “NO!” screamed out Janet followed by Amanda and the rest of the guys. We were so close to escaping only to lose one more of our own friends.

“The door is right there guys,” spat out James suspending his grief for the time, “Let’s make a break for it!”

“Yeah!” I shouted with tears streaming down, “This could be our big break guys! We can get out of this without losing anyone else.” I was hoping we could make it to the door that sat at most 5 feet from us.

“Guys,” stammered out Amanda, “How do we even know if the door is open?”

“She’s right you know,” followed up Janet.

“It’s worth a try, in my opinion,” responded Rick pulling himself together from what had just occurred.

The whirlwind kept swirling about but we ran toward the door…

We ducked and dodged as much as we possibly could, but still we got injured by some of the debris. I reached for the doorknob and still the door was shut. “What now?” I questioned.

“Let’s get moving then guys,” shouted the girls from the top of the stairs. I was hoping we would be able to get out of this house with everyone that was left. If we couldn’t escape through the second floor then we were definitely dead; the only people that knew we were taking this trip was everyone in present in the house. In other words if we all died, then no one was going to come looking for us (I mean our parents would but they knew we did these types of shenanigans every once in a while). Once up the stairs we ran through the hall, splitting up in the process, checking which room would be the best to attempt this escape. Ultimately it turned out that Abigail’s room was the best feasible possibility to escape the nightmare we were in.

“Well everyone I think it’s now or never,” announced James pointing at the window. We all looked at each other and nodded. In the following seconds the entire room shook violently and in a blink of an eye Rick was dragged down to the basement. “RICK!” screeched Amanda. I had to grab her against everything all my instincts to go back down to save him. “He’s a goner Amanda,” James said apologetically, “We have to try to remember him once we get out.” I couldn’t believe how we lost another one of our friends so close to escaping the nightmare that we were in. We turned to look at the window and to our amazement the room seemed to of expanded, what was so close now was so far away. “This isn’t going to be as easy as we hoped it was,” I spoke up.

“Well I wish we knew what time it was. That way we could know how much longer until the sun comes out,” added in Janet.

“Sadly, we don’t know when that will be. More importantly if we did how would that change the situation that we are in?” asked James.

“Yeah, Janet. How would knowing when the sun comes up help us?” chimed in Amanda.

“Well Abigail is only awake at night. So as soon as that sunlight breaks the horizon she disappears completely and we will be able to walk out of here” was the answer that Janet gave us. I didn’t know how to take that news. Either we were very close to seeing the end of the night and being free or no one was going to make it out of here. We held on to one another like a game of red rover and took two steps toward the window. Those two steps saw a complete wall begin to crack on our sides and the ceiling over our head started to crumble just a little. We trudged on taking two more steps and suddenly a huge gap opened up beneath Amanda, if it wasn’t for all of us interlocking our arms she would have fallen immediately. “Hold on!” I screamed as I unlocked my arm from Janet’s and attempted at pulling her up. James came running to the aid and as he did Janet was left alone simply being a cheerleader hoping that we could pull up Amanda.

“Hi Janet. Remember me?” the voice sent a chill down our spines as we pulled up Amanda. It was all a set up to get Janet separated from us and it worked to perfection. “Why are you doing this? All we wanted was to make you feel at ease,” spoke Janet trembling.

“Oh honey, I’m at peace I do this for fun. I love seeing who’s stupid enough to come to this house. It just so happened that you were the victim this time.”

“Abigail. Just let them go please”

“What do I get in return if I let them go?”

“I’ll let you have my life if you spare them.”

“Interesting deal”

“So is that a yes? Will you take my life for their freedom?”

“Well,” she hesitated, “I still want Amanda dead……So no.” In a flash Amanda had nails shot into her backside. She dropped to her knees and whispered, “Get out safe.” Those were the last words that Amanda spoke to us. At this sight Janet charged at Abigail not noticing how she was running into a trap, so James rushed to save his girl from what would have been her death. He pushed her out of the way as the chandelier came crashing down missing him, but he went down the rabbit hole that it left. I was still in shock seeing how Amanda’s blood was on my person because of the nails that were shot at her. “I’ll leave your friend for later seeing how I just took your boyfriend from you.” At this moment in time all I remember was that everything went completely pitch black, you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face or outside the house. All I heard was screaming coming from what seemed to be all around me and I knew that Janet was the one behind it but I couldn’t do anything seeing how I couldn’t see where I would be stepping.

Then the slightest sliver of light shown through the window. Everything went back to normal, even the screaming stopped. The sun was rising and I could hear the door unlocking. “James?” I called out, but there was no response. So I began to move slowly toward the door to head down stair and hopefully get out. I tried to calculate my steps getting to the front door and slowly turning the knob. “James?” I called out once more and again there was no response. I let a tear go knowing that I was the only one that made it out of the house of Abigail Drew; what had started as a simple adventure amongst friends turned into a night filled with dreadfulness. In the end I learned a valuable lesson to question any dare brought to you by friends, I will forever be changed by the experience which I suffered.